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Organic light emitting displays are the next big thing for mobile technology—they're better in so many ways. And LG's just demonstrated an OLED screen that's freakishly awesome: it can resist hammer blows. Show me your LCD doing that?

The screen was shown at the recent SID Display Week event, and at first glance appeared to be a pretty typical 15-inch 1356-by-768-pixel OLED display, measuring just a millimeter deep. It's a full-color unit, average luminance 200 cd/m2 and a great contrast ratio of 100,000:1. That all fits in pretty well with what we understand about OLED tech.

But at the demonstration, LG had someone repeatedly smacking at the screen with a big hammer—which, according to TechOn, made a "huge noise." And the screen survived intact. That's because LG had baked some secret sauce into this screen's recipe. The OLEDs are formed on a glass substrate, as they often are, but that's backed with a steel sheet, and the light-emitting layer is covered with a thin skim of protective resin. That makes it massively resistant to shock, but not flexible—because of the glass.

This kind of layout should also be compatible with capacitive touchscreen tech, since that system doesn't require a physical contact, and it could be placed beneath the resin layer on top of the OLEDs. When this becomes available on smartphones, the days of panicking when your phone slips from your pocket should be over.